Jesus: The Guantanamo Years
From the Boston Globe
The title of Abie Philbin Bowman's act is brilliant in its simplicity: "Jesus: The Guantanamo Years." And the young Irish comedian is quick to acknowledge that the title probably had a lot to do with his unexpected success at last summer's Edinburgh Fringe Festival."There are 1,800 shows there," he says. "If you can't sell your idea in 10 seconds, you might as well not go."
But the title sold it, and his one-man show became a surprise hit in Edinburgh, then went on to sold-out success in London's West End. Now "Jesus: The Guantanamo Years" has arrived at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theater in Somerville. Through Aug. 12, Philbin Bowman spins his tale of the Son of God who returns to Earth as a stand-up comic and runs into a spot of trouble at US Immigration -- he's a bearded Palestinian, after all, who's willing to die as a religious martyr.
Ironically enough, the show's original opening here had to be delayed by a week, when Philbin Bowman had a bit of immigration trouble himself. But he insists the truth is less dramatic than that sounds.
"I would love to tell you that it was this huge conspiracy in the State Department, and Bush and Cheney got involved, and then the Supreme Court intervened and overruled them," Philbin Bowman says over lunch in Cambridge. "But no, it was just bureaucracy -- not ticking all the right boxes on all the right forms, and we didn't plan enough time to get it all done."
In fact, he says, the officer he met at US Immigration was amused, not appalled, when he asked what the show was about and Philbin Bowman told him. "He said, 'He should have come to me -- he would've gone straight through!' "
In the show, however, Jesus has a rougher time of it. After walking across the Atlantic to spread Dad's message that "humor is a gift from God," he ends up in Guantanamo, being interrogated as a suspected terrorist. And it's the prison, of course, that's the true subject of the show.
"The real target is Guantanamo, something that is deeply un-Christian," Philbin Bowman says. Many Christians have seen the show, he says, and almost no one has objected to it as blasphemy. KEEP READING
Bill McCartney
